Latin American turbulences

By
Emir Sader                                                                         Read Spanish Version

Latin
America has become the arena for an intense combat between the old
and the new; between an exhausted model that insists on surviving and
the construction of alternatives that struggle to be born and
consolidate.

However,
it is undoubtedly a period in which the breezes of a positive change
are blowing.

The
right, defeated in countries like Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina,
Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Paraguay, has been
recovering, seizing the initiative once again and on occasion
unleashing counteroffensives. The first counteroffensive took place
in Venezuela in 2002, led by the business-run media which almost
gained its objective.

Soon
thereafter came the campaign against Lula’s government, which also
used the communications media as its main tool. Then followed the
separatist campaign in Bolivia and the offensive from the oppositions
in Venezuela and Argentina.

The
period covered by the length of those administrations began with
Chávez’s election in 1998 and involves eight countries. For
the past many years, the right has been trying to topple at least one
of those governments, to show that the new wave might be in a process
of reversal.

As
successes, the right can claim the victory achieved by Alan García
in Peru and Felipe Calderón in Mexico, but none of the
elements with new orientations has been defeated: Chávez, Lula
and Kirchner were re-elected.

But
it isn’t only in the countries that seek to build a new model that
turbulence is occurring. Colombia continues to be a stage for war.
Mexico is witnessing the proliferation of the scariest and most
worrisome organized violence, associated with drug trafficking. Peru
is seeing big popular demonstrations against the government, and
something similar is happening in Chile.

Turbulence
is widespread today, despite the cycle of economic expansion the
region is undergoing, thanks to the new policies. But turbulence is
also happening in the international landscape, which has been
favorable to the exports made by the nations of the continent.

This
stage of instability is due to a clash between an economic model —
whose exhaustion created grave crises in the three main economies:
Mexico 1994, Brazil 1999, Argentina 2001-02 — and the difficulties
for the construction of a new model.

After
wading through the inflationary processes, neoliberalism was unable
to impose a new pace of growth to our countries’ economies.

The
government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Brazil is a clear example
of that. After the honeymoon of monetary stability that became public
debt, a recessive process began, with three bankruptcies in the
economy — and the corresponding letters of credit from the
International Monetary Fund — a situation from which Brazil emerged
only recently.

The
future of Latin America in the first half of the century is being
played in dependence of the consolidation of those new types of
governments — with their internal differences in orientation but
with a common opposition to the FTAs and granting privileges to all
the processes of regional integration — both in the moves to build
post-neoliberal models and in the deepening and spread of the various
initiatives of regional integration.

The
referendum on the mandate of the president, the vice president and
the governors of Bolivia, set for Aug. 10, is the next big
confrontation in the region.

If
the opposition succeeds — a lesser possibility right now — the
right could claim a first reversal in the general trend of the past
decade in the continent.

If
Evo Morales wins, he can renegotiate the project for a new
Constitution under favorable conditions, blocking the intensified
attempts at autonomy by the country’s eastern states and keeping them
from preventing the agrarian reform to affect their bases of power,
including the eventual replacement of some of the governors who today
stand in opposition to the Bolivian government.

A
little later, in April 2009, the progressive governments have a
chance to augment their list of presidents with the likely victory of
Mauricio Funes of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation
Front in El Salvador.

For
all those reasons, we can look forward to decisive years for the
physiognomy that Latin America will present in the first half of the
new century.

Source:
Carta Maior